Monday, September 21, 2015

New Car, Mini Health Update, and Prescription Tip!

Hey everyone! Exciting news is happening in the Powers household!

We Got a New Car!
Monday morning (today) was an "administrative day" for Patrick, meaning he wasn't teaching and his boss kind of let him have the day to himself because he needed to take care of some important things since he'll be leaving on Tuesday to go to Minnesota for a few days. Thankfully this trip is on the shorter side, so he'll be back on Friday.

Anyway, on the trip up to Oregon while I was driving (just before we switched "shifts"), a warning light came on in our car that said that there was something wrong with the tires. Only being a few miles from our destination (where we had decided previously to stop and switch drivers) and not being anywhere we could pull over to check since we were literally in the mountains, we kept driving and stopped in Weed, California to inspect the tires. Nothing was visibly wrong with them and Patrick made sure to check the air in the tires at the gas station just to be sure, but they were all measuring just fine. The light has stayed on ever since. Even throughout the week while we drove around after we got here, we kept an eye on the tires to make sure they weren't deflating or bulging. Nothing was happening, but the light stayed on.

When Patrick was finally able to take the car in this morning, the mechanics and tire specialists couldn't find anything wrong with the tires and decided that it was definitely a warranty issue and an alert malfunction. However, while Patrick was there, he decided to have them run some numbers.

The problem with having a lease (for us, at least) is that we drive a LOT, especially for Patrick's job. Our lease came with a 40k mileage limit over a span of three years, but as of this month we were already well past 30k miles and knew we would be going over the mileage limit. A few months ago we tried to get into a new lease but they definitely wanted a large sum as a down payment and our monthly lease would go up significantly, so it wasn't worth it for us, though we did have a make, model, and color picked out for our potential new vehicle.

This morning when I woke up, Patrick informed me that we could get a brand new car with all of the same features (and more) of our current car for less than we're actually paying for our current lease and asked me if I thought it was a good idea. I quickly weighed our options.

Pros:

We won't have to wait in line at the DMV to register the car.

Because of Oregon laws, if you lease a car in Oregon, the state of Oregon will hold the title. This means that in order to register our car here, we would have had to register the car and then wait for the bank to transfer the lease to a local bank, then wait for that bank to transfer the lease to the state of Oregon. We know friends who have had to do this and it is an absolute nightmare and should be avoided at all costs.

We won't feel the stares of people who see our California license plates and get angry that yet another Californian is moving into their state and ruining the sanctity of Oregon (sorry! I'm from Michigan, it's not my fault!)

We'd get a brand new vehicle for less than what we're already paying.

This brand new vehicle that we'd get comes with all-wheel drive and all-weather tires, which we would have needed to put on the car eventually because of the possibility of ice and snow here.

The car that we'd get, which is a Mazda CX-5, is much higher up off of the ground than the Mazda 6 that we'd be trading in, which is helpful in any situation because you can see around more things.

The car has a hatchback!

We wouldn't have to worry about going over our mileage at the end of the Mazda 6's lease!

Cons:

We would need to get used to a new car because I'm sure we'll lose it in the parking lot a couple of times in the beginning.

That's it! The answer was obviously YES and Patrick came home with a new car this afternoon! I know some people are probably thinking "A new car? Wouldn't that cost them more money? Didn't they just have a GoFundMe page up for medical expenses? How can they afford that?"

The answer is: It's not costing us anything and it is only beneficial to us. The dealership wanted a "down payment" of one month's lease in order to lease the car, which Patrick had already put away for this month's lease payment for the Mazda 6. So our "down payment" is actually the lease payment that Patrick was planning on paying this month. We're both super excited and it takes a lot of weight off of our shoulders (his more than mine) that we won't have to worry about registration, the lease, the mileage, the tires, etc.

Here's the new car! 2016 Mazda CX-5 Grand Touring.

We both really love the wheels.

Mini Health Update:

My cysts are mostly gone! I can now only feel some "nodules" under the skin, which are just pockets under the skin where the cysts tunneled, but they're not painful. If anything, they're sore from the swelling finally going down. You know how if you put your hair up in a pony tail too tight for too long it hurts, but when you take the pony tail down it still hurts, just in a different way? Like that. Only the left armpit has that feeling (I assume because it's the one that healed last), and I'm continuing to get better and I have full range of movement. I also filled one of my prescriptions today and it will be ready for pickup in a few hours, so that is one less thing that I need to worry about. In reference to the prescriptions, have I told you guys about GoodRx?

Save on Your Prescriptions!

I just saved more than HALF of what my prescription would have costed at Walgreens. If you don't have insurance, the next time you need to have a prescription filled, go to GoodRx and search your prescription. It will provide you with a list of pharmacies, from cheapest to most expensive, and it will provide you with a coupon to either download to your phone or print from your computer for that prescription*. You don't need to sign up for anything, download anything (unless you download the coupon to your phone, however you can just look up the same information on your phone and show the coupon information to your pharmacist without downloading anything), provide any email addresses or personal information, etc. My prescription went from being over $60 to just over $25 for one month's prescription, and because the prescription is filled in three month "chunks", that saved me almost $100 in just one shot. I'm so thankful that I found GoodRx. If you're curious as to how it works, there is a short video on their home page that explains it all (just in case you're skeptical). I hope this helps someone!

*Please note that each prescription with each different pharmacy has a different "coupon code" so if you have multiple prescriptions, look each of them up and write down/ print out/download each coupon separately.